St. Oswald of Worcester

Stephenson Brooks

• Publisher: Leicester University Press
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN:
  9780718500030
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780567340313
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

St Oswald was the youngest of the three great monastic reformers of tenth-century England, whose work transformed English religious, intellectual and political life. Certainly a more attractive and perhaps a more effective figure than either St Dunstan or St Ethelwold, Oswald's impact upon his cathedrals at Worcester and York and upon his West Midland and East Anglian monasteries was radical and lasting. In this volume, researchers throw light on St Oswald's background, career, influence and cult and on the society that he helped to shape. His cathedral at Worcester and his monastery at Ramsey were among the richest and best documented Anglo-Saxon churches. The volume provides a window onto the realities of tenth-century English politics, religion and economics in the light of contemporary continental developments.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• 1 St Oswald: monk, bishop and archbishop
• 2 Oswald, Fleury and continental reform
• 3 St Oswald's family and kin
• 4 Byrhtferth and Oswald
• 5 The community of Worcester, 961–c.1100
• 6 St Oswald's tenants
• 7 Oswaldslow: an 'immunity'?
• 8 The city of Worcester in the tenth century
• 9 The administrative landscape of the diocese of Worcester in the tenth century
• 10 St Oswald and 10,000 West Midland peasants
• 11 Book production and decoration at Worcester in the tenth and eleventh centuries
• 12 Saint-making and relic collecting by Oswald and his communities
• 13 St Oswald and St Wulfstan
• 14 The liturgical manuscripts of Oswald's houses
• 15 Some reflections on liturgical music at late Anglo-Saxon Worcester
• Index
• Index of charters
• Index of manuscripts